Fairfield doc fined for opioid script

By Kate Farrish, Conn. Health I-Team

Updated 4:54 pm, Tuesday, March 21, 2017

The state Medical Examining Board Tuesday disciplined a Fairfield pulmonologist for improperly prescribing opioids and a former UConn Health doctor who had stolen medication from the health center for his private practice.

Dr. Igal Staw, who works at Respiratory Associates in Fairfield, was reprimanded, fined $7,500 and has been permanently restricted from prescribing opioids, under a consent order he agreed to. He also must hire a supervisor to monitor his drug prescriptions and will be placed on two years of probation if his state registration to prescribe controlled substances is ever reinstated.

In 2012 and 2013, Staw prescribed opioids to eight patients with chronic pain, including some who may have been abusing the medicine, the order said. He also failed to document the reasons for the prescriptions or justify in the patients’ medical charts why he was increasing the doses, state records show.

In an unrelated case in 2008 in Norwalk, Staw was sentenced to two years of probation for scamming insurance companies out of $171,000, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s office. Staw, then 70, of Westport, admitted to engaging in health care fraud in 2006 by claiming to insurance companies that he had provided physician services to patients when the patients had actually received physical and massage therapy and nutritional counseling by non-physicians, the press release said.

He paid back the insurance companies and also paid the federal government $250,000 to settle allegations that his medical practice Respiratory Associates, then based in Norwalk, filed false Medicare claims between 2000 and 2006 for the physical and massage therapy, the press release said.

State Department of Public Health records show that in 2008, the medical board had reprimanded Staw and placed him on probation for two years.

In the UConn Health case, the board fined Dr. Micha Abeles of West Hartford $5,000 for stealing Depo-Medrol, an anti-inflammatory drug, and Humira, which is used to treat arthritis, from the hospital’s stock for use in his private practice in Meriden, state records show.

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The thefts occurred in 2015 and 2016. Abeles retired in 2016 from his post as associate director of the UConn Multipurpose Arthritis Center, DPH records show. He continues to treat patients part-time in private practice, the records show.